Freestyle Friday: The Product & Marketing Tools/Strategy I Use at SeatGeek

In this article:

Your style is generic, mine is…

Today I launched a new blog series called “Freestyle Friday,” where I will pick one request from our Facebook community and write a post about it. To get involved, like us on Facebook –> http://www.facebook.com/SeatGeek.

Thanks to David Primus (@davidprimus) for sending out the only request: Hearing about product strategy would be very interesting, where you see yourselves in the sports and entertainment industries – and where you would like to head from here – David

First off, this is a great but broad question, so I am going to do my best to answer concisely.

I joined SeatGeek in March, and so far I have identified a few key themes to our product strategy and culture: 1) be efficient 2) test a lot 3) measure everything 4) everyone is on the product team (effectively).

I was previously on the Product Marketing team at Vistaprint.com, so I have a decent sense of product at a larger company vs. a <10 person startup.

Tools to Increase Efficiency

Before I go into the list, an interesting aspect about a startup is that we have to be very resourceful about the tools we use and the price (if any) we pay for them. In past positions, I have had homegrown tools specifically built for the needs of the company – obviously that is not the case here. Also, I always seek to find free option where available that fall into the old “80/20” framework.

Here is a sample of the tools I use (though I definitely have missed some):

We have and continue to see ourselves as a Kayak/Farecast of the sports/concert ticketing industry

We are positioned as the only provider of ticket price forecasts in the sports/music ticketing industry

We are a young company that brings a unique analytically driven perspective to the industry

Where We Are Going

The secondary ticket market is a $10 -$15 billion dollar industry, there is a lot of upside, and we have a lot going for us after only one year in the space

Our short-term product roadmap, involves building out our new interactive seating maps that we just launched for the NFL – we recently hired a project manager to oversee these efforts and work towards completing the NBA, NHL, MLB, etc. as soon as possible (these will be rolled-out in phases, not all at once)

We just launched a whole site redesign yesterday and will continue to test and iterate on this new design

We have some really interesting new deal discovery tools and have some big plans for the future that are still not ready to be made public

We don’t have an official Product Manager – Jack, Co-Founder, would be the closest to this, but he also does many other things for us. A typical product meeting (by meeting I mean grouping around a computer screen) would likely include a Co-Founder, Developer, Marketer, Intern, etc.

That is all I have for now because I have to catch a train out of Grand Central at 7:00. See you next time around and please ask questions because I am positive I didn’t cover everything here.